New Yorkshire Writing
Encyclopedia
New Yorkshire Writing was a UK based literary quarterly that briefly enjoyed one of the largest circulations of what is commonly called a "little magazine", distributed as a supplement in 13,000 copies of The Month In Yorkshire, the arts listings magazine that was published by the Yorkshire Arts Association (YAA). It had an estimated readership of 45,000 according to an announcement by YAA’s Director Michael Dawson. He proposed in a launch announcement press release that the magazine’s distribution method “would bring serious creative fiction and poetry to a much larger and more varied audience than usual.” All contributors were to be paid, something that only a handful of British literary magazines were able to do.
The editor of New Yorkshire Writing was Jay Jeff Jones, an expatriate American playwright and poet who had previously been associate editor of Wordworks, the Manchester-based experimental writing magazine published by Michael Butterworth
and an occasional contributor to Transatlantic Review. Jones was invited to take the position by a panel that included the poets Peter Morgan and Cal Clothier. He edited the magazine while moonlighting from his job as a UK regional Creative Director for Saatchi & Saatchi
. The magazine's designer, Chris Rhodes, was also a Saatchi employee.
The format of the magazine was tabloid, an uncommon style for a literary magazine, notably excepting the contemporaneous London based magazine, Bananas, edited by Emma Tennant
.
The YAA also financed New Yorkshire Writing, establishing the magazine in the wake of a contentious closure of Yorkshire Review, a literary quarterly that it published in 1976.
The first issue of New Yorkshire Writing appeared in Summer 1977 and the final issue, number 8, in Spring 1979. The contents’ emphasis was short fiction, poetry and reviews from or related to writers and publishers with a Yorkshire connection. In practice this qualification was liberally interpreted to allow writers that were temporarily resident in or just passing through the county.
Fiction published included work by Jeff Nuttall
, M. S. Winecoff, Roger Howard, Frances McNeil, David Brett and Trevor Hoyle Poetry contributors included I. P. Taylor, Ian McMillan, Paul Roche
, Anna Adams, Michael Horovitz
, Pete Morgan
, Patrick Bew, Nick Toczek
, Geraldine Monk
, Heathcote Williams
and (posthumously) Bill Butler.http://www.holli.co.uk/unicorn/text.htm
Articles and reviews were contributed by Jeff Nuttall (notably on Gaudette by Ted Hughes
), Peter Inch (on The Savoy Book) and Jay Jeff Jones. Interviews with writers, including several carried out by William Bedford, featured Angela Carter
, James Kirkup
(in the midst of the Gay News
blasphemy
trial and appeal), Piers Paul Read
and C. H. Sisson
. Jones also commissioned original illustrations for many of the written contributions and some of these were by Robert Clark, Rosamund Jones, Jeff Nuttall, Kate Mellor, David Andrassy, Paul Sowden and Sue Goodwin.
The magazine came to a close partially due to a controversy arising from the publication in issue 6 of a short story by Jeff Nuttall titled "Dream Piece". Nuttall was a cult novelist, poet, artist, playwright, actor and one of the founders of theatre company, The People Showhttp://www.peopleshow.co.uk/, although best known for writing the forceful analysis of the 60s generation alternative society, Bomb Culture
. The short story gave offence to Rotherham
Town Councillor Ron Hughes. He objected to the sexual nature of some of the content saying that he had “personally seen such stuff only on lavatory walls and then it was more expertly done.” He asked for his council to withdraw its financial contribution to the YAA.
The furore was quickly taken up by the press, initially with some amusement, but was aggravated when another little magazine, also funded by the YAA, produced its latest issue. This was Curtains, which had a modest circulation of 500 copies and was edited by Paul Buck. The issue included genitally explicit photographic content.
In the course of the controversy the chairman of the literature panel, Leeds University professor John Barnard, resigned because the panel refused to exclude Nuttall from discussions of the principles raised by his short story. The panel members then voted unanimously to continue to support the two publications.
The YAA executive responded by dismissing this current literary advisory panel, which was not the same panel that had originally granted funding for New Yorkshire Writing or Curtains.
The Guardian newspaper on November 22, 1978 reported, “The literature panel of a regional arts association which includes a Royal National Theatre
playwright and a nationally known novelist (Elizabeth North) has been sacked because it resisted censorship of two publications backed by the association.” In the annual report of the British Arts Council, published during the same week, the Council’s Director General, Roy Shaw noted that, “Some politicians have yet to learn…that politicians should not seek to control directly the contents of arts activities.” However Shaw refused to intervene in the matter or declare on the correctness of an association dismissing one of its appointed advisory panels. In the same article the playwright and former literary panel member Barry Collins said that political interference from the local councils that dominated the association executive had been increasing over the recent months.
The following week it was reported in the Yorkshire Post
that Collins (who had been the previous year’s recipient) had also resigned as a judge for the annual YAA Literature Prize. He said, “If I am not fit to be a panel member than I’m not fit to judge their competition either…The last thing a contemporary writer, film-maker or artist should do is restrict his work to the tastes of whoever happens to have been elected in the most recent council election…”
Nuttall was quoted in the same article, saying that it had all been “a storm in a teacup” until the YAA had sacked the panel. “I have written filth in my time, rotten, sordid, aggressive filth, punk razor stuff 20 years before its time. This is nothing compared to that.”
New Yorkshire Writing continued for two further issues but one of these included the first publication of Heathcote Williams’ poem, "The People Who Run Tesco's Must be Buddhists". Concerned about another possible controversy, the YAA executive required the excision of the word "Tesco
" throughout the poem.
"An important literary journal that fell foul of the censors." Index on Censorship
Editor and format
The editor of New Yorkshire Writing was Jay Jeff Jones, an expatriate American playwright and poet who had previously been associate editor of Wordworks, the Manchester-based experimental writing magazine published by Michael Butterworth
Michael Butterworth
Michael Butterworth is a British author and publisher who has written many novels and short stories, particularly in the genre of science fiction...
and an occasional contributor to Transatlantic Review. Jones was invited to take the position by a panel that included the poets Peter Morgan and Cal Clothier. He edited the magazine while moonlighting from his job as a UK regional Creative Director for Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi
Saatchi & Saatchi is a global advertising agency network with 140 offices in 80 countries and over 6,500 staff. It was founded in London in 1970 but now headquartered in New York. The parent company of the agency group was known as Saatchi & Saatchi PLC from 1976 to 1994, was listed on the London...
. The magazine's designer, Chris Rhodes, was also a Saatchi employee.
The format of the magazine was tabloid, an uncommon style for a literary magazine, notably excepting the contemporaneous London based magazine, Bananas, edited by Emma Tennant
Emma Tennant
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL is a British novelist and editor. She is known for a postmodern approach to her fiction, which is often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr....
.
The YAA also financed New Yorkshire Writing, establishing the magazine in the wake of a contentious closure of Yorkshire Review, a literary quarterly that it published in 1976.
The first issue of New Yorkshire Writing appeared in Summer 1977 and the final issue, number 8, in Spring 1979. The contents’ emphasis was short fiction, poetry and reviews from or related to writers and publishers with a Yorkshire connection. In practice this qualification was liberally interpreted to allow writers that were temporarily resident in or just passing through the county.
Contributors
Fiction published included work by Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall
Jeff Nuttall was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist sympathiser and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall.-Life and work:Jeff Nuttall was born in Clitheroe,...
, M. S. Winecoff, Roger Howard, Frances McNeil, David Brett and Trevor Hoyle Poetry contributors included I. P. Taylor, Ian McMillan, Paul Roche
Paul Roche
Donald Robert Paul Roche was a British poet, novelist, and professor of English, a critically acclaimed translator of Greek and Latin classics, notably the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, and Plautus...
, Anna Adams, Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz is an English poet, artist and translator.-Life and career:Michael Horovitz was the youngest of ten children who were brought to England from Nazi Germany by their parents, both of whom were part of a network of European-rabbinical families...
, Pete Morgan
Pete Morgan
Colin Peter Morgan was a British poet, lyricist and television documentary author and presenter.Morgan's career as a poet began in the mid-1950s when he was 16 and living alone in London. He entered the British Army and rose to the rank of infantry platoon commander while serving in West Germany...
, Patrick Bew, Nick Toczek
Nick Toczek
Nick Toczek is a British writer and performer working variously as poet, journalist, magician, vocalist, lyricist and radio broadcaster. He was raised in Bradford and then took a degree in Industrial Metallurgy at Birmingham University where he began reading and publishing his poetry...
, Geraldine Monk
Geraldine Monk
Geraldine Monk is a British poet. She was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Since the late 1970s, she has published many collections of poetry and has recorded her poetry in collaboration with musicians...
, Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams
Heathcote Williams is an English poet, actor and award-winning playwright. He is also an intermittent painter, sculptor and long-time conjuror...
and (posthumously) Bill Butler.http://www.holli.co.uk/unicorn/text.htm
Articles and reviews were contributed by Jeff Nuttall (notably on Gaudette by Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
), Peter Inch (on The Savoy Book) and Jay Jeff Jones. Interviews with writers, including several carried out by William Bedford, featured Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
, James Kirkup
James Kirkup
James Falconer Kirkup, FRSL was a prolific English poet, translator and travel writer. He was brought up in South Shields, and educated at South Shields Secondary School and Durham University. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays...
(in the midst of the Gay News
Gay News
Gay News was a pioneering fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality...
blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
trial and appeal), Piers Paul Read
Piers Paul Read
Piers Paul Read, FRSL is a British novelist and non-fiction writer.-Background:Read was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire...
and C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...
. Jones also commissioned original illustrations for many of the written contributions and some of these were by Robert Clark, Rosamund Jones, Jeff Nuttall, Kate Mellor, David Andrassy, Paul Sowden and Sue Goodwin.
Controversy
The magazine came to a close partially due to a controversy arising from the publication in issue 6 of a short story by Jeff Nuttall titled "Dream Piece". Nuttall was a cult novelist, poet, artist, playwright, actor and one of the founders of theatre company, The People Showhttp://www.peopleshow.co.uk/, although best known for writing the forceful analysis of the 60s generation alternative society, Bomb Culture
Bomb Culture
Bomb Culture is an important book at the time that the counter-culture in London was rapidly emerging. It was later largely forgotten as the 'scene' moved away from the older generation artists towards new happenings....
. The short story gave offence to Rotherham
Rotherham
Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Don, at its confluence with the River Rother, between Sheffield and Doncaster. Rotherham, at from Sheffield City Centre, is surrounded by several smaller settlements, which together form the wider Metropolitan Borough of...
Town Councillor Ron Hughes. He objected to the sexual nature of some of the content saying that he had “personally seen such stuff only on lavatory walls and then it was more expertly done.” He asked for his council to withdraw its financial contribution to the YAA.
The furore was quickly taken up by the press, initially with some amusement, but was aggravated when another little magazine, also funded by the YAA, produced its latest issue. This was Curtains, which had a modest circulation of 500 copies and was edited by Paul Buck. The issue included genitally explicit photographic content.
In the course of the controversy the chairman of the literature panel, Leeds University professor John Barnard, resigned because the panel refused to exclude Nuttall from discussions of the principles raised by his short story. The panel members then voted unanimously to continue to support the two publications.
The YAA executive responded by dismissing this current literary advisory panel, which was not the same panel that had originally granted funding for New Yorkshire Writing or Curtains.
The Guardian newspaper on November 22, 1978 reported, “The literature panel of a regional arts association which includes a Royal National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
playwright and a nationally known novelist (Elizabeth North) has been sacked because it resisted censorship of two publications backed by the association.” In the annual report of the British Arts Council, published during the same week, the Council’s Director General, Roy Shaw noted that, “Some politicians have yet to learn…that politicians should not seek to control directly the contents of arts activities.” However Shaw refused to intervene in the matter or declare on the correctness of an association dismissing one of its appointed advisory panels. In the same article the playwright and former literary panel member Barry Collins said that political interference from the local councils that dominated the association executive had been increasing over the recent months.
The following week it was reported in the Yorkshire Post
Yorkshire Post
The Yorkshire Post is a daily broadsheet newspaper, published in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England by Yorkshire Post Newspapers, a company owned by Johnston Press...
that Collins (who had been the previous year’s recipient) had also resigned as a judge for the annual YAA Literature Prize. He said, “If I am not fit to be a panel member than I’m not fit to judge their competition either…The last thing a contemporary writer, film-maker or artist should do is restrict his work to the tastes of whoever happens to have been elected in the most recent council election…”
Nuttall was quoted in the same article, saying that it had all been “a storm in a teacup” until the YAA had sacked the panel. “I have written filth in my time, rotten, sordid, aggressive filth, punk razor stuff 20 years before its time. This is nothing compared to that.”
New Yorkshire Writing continued for two further issues but one of these included the first publication of Heathcote Williams’ poem, "The People Who Run Tesco's Must be Buddhists". Concerned about another possible controversy, the YAA executive required the excision of the word "Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...
" throughout the poem.
"An important literary journal that fell foul of the censors." Index on Censorship
External links
- Doollee.com, Jay Jeff Jones theatre works.
- Jeff-Nuttall.co.uk, Jeff Nuttall obituary and memorial website.
- Library.UCL.ac.uk, New Yorkshire Writing at UCL Special Collections.